Brian DePaul Current Event

Brian DePaul         11/4/14

Earth Science            Current Event

Harwood, William. "NASA: No Danger to Space Station after Supply Rocket Blows up."        

CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 29 Oct. 2014. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.

NASA: No danger to space station after supply rocket blows up

An Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket making its fifth flight exploded seconds after launch from the Virginia coast Tuesday. The explosion that this rocket had made destroyed an uncrewed Cygnus cargo ship. It took about fifteen seconds for the rocket to explode. For the first moments of the take off all was going great. The cause of this terrifying accident was the fact that the exhaust plume had greatly intensified, which then was followed by a detonation at the bottom of the rocket. The booster of this rocket fell back to earth up in flames, leaving a  liquid oxygen and refined kerosene propellants ignited in a huge fireball. When the object came to impact with the surface burning debris flew into the night sky making it look like fourth of July with a background of gray smoke. The explosion took many tolls on not only NASA but many other companies and resources. The loss was a major setback for Orbital's plans to establish routine space station access under a $1.9 billion contract with NASA calling for delivery of 20 tons of hardware over at least eight flights through 2016. This was also a major setback for this space station program. More than 5,000 pounds of cargo and supplies, including research hardware, student experiments, spare parts, food and crew supplies, 32 small nanosatellites and other gear, were lost in the mishap. Many officials went on to say that losing supplies was not nearly as bad as losing a life, and this is why that this is not seen as bad as it could have been.

This tragedy could have many effects on society. The more the awful space explorations failures, the more people feel uncomfortable and unconfident in todays technology. This will also take a giant toll on the space industry. If anyone has ideas of travelling to space, then all ideas are shattered because of the feeling of safety. This is also along the lines of Virgin Galactic’s incident recently. These mishaps keep occurring which is making space travel less of an option to many.

The strength of this article are the fact that there are videos, great evidence, pictures, and a trusty source. The weaknesses of this article is that it doesn't really have an analysis from the author. For some that don't know much about this topic, it could be difficult to understand. Overall, this article was strongly written and gave me a new perspective on space travel and its expenses.